So, the action had already begun. Marcus’ teeth shone in his bitter smile. “Who would take the word of slave physicians against mine, a citizen of Rome, a lawyer?”
“They were not slaves,” said Julius. He put his hand behind him to hold off Catilina who had already half-drawn his sword. “Marcus, you are a man of prudence and sensibility and intelligence. Do not, I beg of you, embroil yourself in this.”
“Why should he, except out of vulgar hatred of me?” said Catilina. “I saved the life of his brother. However, he is not grateful. He would destroy me for a whim, for he is but a plebeian and he is envious. What it is to be base!”
“Marcus is not base-born,” said Julius, with reproof. “He is of the Helvii. His mother is the friend of my mother. Let us not exchange insults, Lucius.” He regarded Marcus with pity. “As one who has loved you from childhood, dear friend, I advise you well. Do not engage in controversy out of vengefulness. It is beneath your dignity, and will bring you nothing but regret. It is too late for Livia. Two nights ago she poisoned her son, the son of Lucius, then attempted to poison herself also. Apparently the poison was too slow, and she feared she would live. So she stabbed herself, and she died.”
Marcus listened. He felt nothing at all, except that a great silence and stillness surrounded him. It was as if he stood in a pool of icy water that extended all about him, and nothing moved. The water rose, numbing all his body. It reached his lips and froze them. It reached his eyes, and he was blinded. Then he heard a far and mournful drum beating in the air, in his ears, in his throat, in all the universe, and he did not know it was his own heart. Now he could see Livia again in the forest, seated beneath a tree; a scarlet leaf, like a stain of blood, lay on her bosom.
He could think again, and he thought, I can no longer live in a world that does not contain Livia. Then he had another thought: She is at peace, at last, that strange and sorrowful girl.
He found himself seated again. His head was bent on his chest. Julius was pressing a goblet of wine against his lips. He lifted a hand like iron and motioned it aside. He did not hear Catilina say with incredulous savagery, “Is it possible that this slave dared to touch Livia?”
“Quiet,” said Julius. “I know Marcus well. If he loved Livia, it was as a distant nymph, not to be seized, not to be known. You know this is true, and it does you little credit to pretend to believe otherwise.”
She is at peace, Marcus thought. The ice and grief were heavy within him, but there was also a great quietude which he did not know as yet was only despair.
Julius seated himself opposite Marcus and put his hand on the other’s knee. He spoke gently. “Slaves have repeated that for several nights before Livia slew herself and her son she muttered ceaselessly. She spoke of lawyers, and her will. Then one day she disappeared from her house, and from under the very eye of her anxious guardians. She returned in a state of incoherent distress. She never spoke rationally again. Therefore, you understand, dear Marcus, it was necessary for Lucius to discover if she had indeed consulted a lawyer and had made a will. Who knows what sad absurdities she had written in it, what baseless accusations? What dishonor! It would be an embarrassment to Lucius, as her husband. She had no fortune to leave. She, like so many others of us, had been ruined by the wars. It is a measure of her madness that she did not know this.”
Slowly, Marcus’ head rose from his chest. But he looked only at Julius, and his eyes were stretched wide with horror. Julius patted his knee, sighed again, and appeared more sad.
“I see that you understand, Marcus,” he said. “It is a frightful matter.”
Marcus turned his monstrously heavy head to Catilina, and he spoke only to him.
“Yes, it is a frightful matter. Livia wished to divorce you. She planned to dispose of her dowry in the event of her death, after her divorce, for she knew that you would have to return her dowry. But, you had already dissipated her dowry. You had no money at all, except the gifts of Aurelia Orestilla. Livia’s public action for a divorce would have revealed all this, to your dishonor and the punitive action of the law. And to the loss of Aurelia Orestilla, who is a rich woman.
“Therefore,” said Marcus in a hoarse and laboring voice, “you had to prevent Livia’s action for divorce, until you could bring your own action against her for madness. But Livia, you learned, had tried to consult lawyers. What was left to you? But murder?” His voice rose like a screaming eagle’s. “You murdered her!”
Julius stood up as if shocked to the heart. “Marcus!” he exclaimed.
But Marcus pointed at the silent Catilina. “Look upon him! Guilt is red on his face, in his black heart! He killed his wife and his son for the sake of a woman who is wanton, and who is rich! The poison was sufficient for your son, was it not, Catilina? But it was not sufficient for Livia. You dared not let her speak in her agonies. So you plunged your dagger into her innocent heart, and then placed it, crimson with her blood, in her hand!” He stood up, still pointing at the soldier. “What did you do then, base and murderous Catilina? Did you flee silently to friends, who would establish that you had been in their presence while your wife and child were dying? Did you suborn those friends?” He swung to Julius. “Are you one of them, willing to swear that Catilina was with you when his wife and son were dying?”
“He was indeed in my house!” exclaimed Julius. “And so was General Sulla.”
“Then he came to you, red-handed, after he murdered his wife and son!”
“Libel!” said Catilina. “I call you to witness, Julius, this utterance of vicious libel, this malevolent accusation, this vindictive lie of a man who has always hated me!”
“Let us be calm,” said Julius. But his lively face had paled excessively. He looked for a long and considering moment at Catilina, and his mouth had an unreadable expression.
“Yes, let us be calm,” said Marcus in a trembling voice. “Let us consider the case of a murderer who must be brought to justice. Livia is dead. But I shall be her advocate.” He turned to Catilina. “Have you been turned to stone, murderer, by the Gorgon’s head? Or were you born of death? Is there no quiver in you of guilt, of shame? No. You are not a man. You are a vulture, a jackal. I look upon your face and I know you, with all the instincts of my soul, and I recognize what you are. You speak of libel, Catilina. There is a redress for libel. Will you bring suit against me, Catilina? Will you dare let me speak before the magistrates of what I know? Or, will you arrange my ‘suicide’ also?”
Now he looked at Julius Caesar. “Is it possible that you are a murderer also, in your heart? Will you connive to hide a murder? I have loved you since you were a child, though I have not been deceived by you, Julius. I have thought that you loved me also. I beg of you that you stand with me and speak the truth.”
Julius said, “Marcus, I swear to you that Lucius was with me, and General Sulla, and others, at my house when his wife was in her dying agonies, with her child beside her. I swear that a messenger came to us while we were dining, to deliver the message that Livia and Lucius’ son had just expired, by poison and the dagger.”
“And when,” said Marcus, “had Catilina arrived at your house, Julius?”
Julius was silent. He looked at Catilina for a long moment. Then he said in a voice shaken and slow, “He had been with us for several hours.”
“You lie, Julius!” Marcus cried.
But Julius said, looking into Marcus’ eyes, “I am prepared to swear, and with honesty and honor, and others with me, that Catilina had been with us from the late afternoon.”
“Then,” said Marcus, “this has already been discussed among all of you, before you even came to me.”
He lifted his arms with a slow motion of despair, and held them upright.
“Is there no God to avenge this crime, this murder of a young woman and her child?”
“He is mad, the dog,” said Catilina. His handsome face was tense with evil and cold rage. “Let us seek a writ for him, that he be confined in the sanitarium on t
he Tiber, lest he do a mischief in his madness.”
But Julius said to Marcus, who stood like an invoking statue of wrath, “You have uttered a calumny, dear friend, a libel against a gentleman of great family in Rome, against an officer and soldier of Rome, and you have uttered these things on no substantial evidence save your own emotions and your own grief for a girl known long ago, who did not remember you. It is one thing to be romantic and stricken with sorrow, and another to accuse where there is no evidence. I have known Livia for many years, and not in fleeting moments as you knew her. In her calmest moments she was not as other women. In her more excitable—and these I have seen also—she was irrational and distraught. It was not her marriage to Catilina which made her so, for I knew her from my childhood. It was a byword for us boys to say to our sisters, ‘You are as mad as Livia Curius.’
“As for Catilina’s attachment to Aurelia Orestilla, he has not sought to hide it. His marriage was a calamity to him. When he returned to Rome, eager for the arms of his wife, for the embraces of his son, he discovered that Livia did not even recognize him! She shrank from him as though from the jaws of Cerberus. Seeing this strange affright of his mother’s, Catilina’s son became wild also. It was a bitter welcome to a hero of Rome. He had hoped his wife had recovered.”
“She had reason to be afraid,” said Marcus, in a groaning voice and dropping his arms to his sides. “I saw her last in the temple of Vesta, during a thunderstorm. She told me of her terror, of her fear for her child, of the accusations against her of madness. I saw her agonized face, her dead and lightless eyes. She feared, above all things, the return of Catilina, and she feared in truth.”
He looked into Julius’ face. The younger man’s black eyes were flickering in a most peculiar manner, and the black brows were drawn together.
“Julius,” said Marcus, extending a hand to him, “in the name of honor, in the memory of our long friendship, stand with me to bring a murderer to justice.”
Julius took his hand and held it strongly. “If murder had been done, I should stand with you, Marcus. But the murder of the child was done by his mother, and she in turn killed herself.” A veil, like a cast, drew over his eyes. “I am convinced of that truth. And Catilina was with us when these sorrowful crimes were committed. Let the unhappy girl rest in peace, with the ashes of her fathers. To shout out intemperate accusations, which you in calmer moments would be the first to decry, will do Livia no service. We, the comrades of Catilina, have given out, this day—with the assent of the physicians—that Livia and her child perished inadvertently of tainted food. This was done to preserve her own honor. We told you the truth, trusting in your discretion. It is possible that it was an imprudent thing to trust you.”
But Marcus said, “Who else perished of that food?”
All Julius’ features narrowed and lengthened, and he was like one whom Marcus had never seen before. “Two slaves,” he said.
“Four murders,” said Marcus.
He turned to face Catilina, who was now leaning languidly against a wall and staring with indifference at the opposite wall. “Behold,” said Marcus, “the grieving husband, the sorrowful father! Mark his tears, the lines of sadness on his face!”
Julius said, smoothly and coldly, “He is an aristocrat, Cicero. Would you have him rend his garments in public like an indecent pleb, a slave, a hysterical woman of the streets?”
But Marcus hardly heard him. His lawyer’s mind, even over his anguish, was informing him that he was impotent, that he had no proof of any murders, that these men were stronger and mightier than he, that should he denounce Catilina he would put himself not only in danger of punitive laws but of Sulla’s anger.
“Catilina is here with me today, searching for a ridiculous will which would sully the honor of his family, for the sake of Livia, herself, and his child. He had no other purpose.”
Marcus once more gazed at Julius. “I knew you, Caesar, but never did even I, who was not deceived by you, dream that you would condone the murder of a helpless woman and a little child, who had done no wrong, who had lived their lives in fear. I have a Jewish friend, whom you know, Noë ben Joel, and he has told me of what is written in the Sacred Books of the Jews, and the wrath of God. ‘He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.’”
He glanced at Catilina again. “Long ago I had a premonition that Livia would die as she died, when we were young together on my paternal island. And now I say to you both: You will die as Livia died, in your own blood.”
His white face blazed. Catilina lifted himself from his position against the wall. Julius stepped back rapidly from Marcus. As Romans, they were both superstitious. They were transfixed by Marcus’ wide and eloquent eyes, by his attitude of an oracle.
Then both made the hasty sign of protection against the evil eye, and Marcus laughed aloud in his despair to see it. They fled from him and he was alone.
He sat down and leaned his elbows on his table and dropped his face into his hands, and he wept.
That night Marcus called his mother and his brother to him. He sat behind a table like a judge, and not as a son and a brother. He told them of Livia’s death, and the death of her son, and he spoke quietly for all his face was haggard with suffering.
Then he raised his eyes to Quintus and said, “You are my brother, and I love you more than I love my life. You have not spoken Catilina’s name to me, for you knew of my passion for Livia, and my hatred for Catilina. And now I tell you, Quintus, though you are dearer to me than even my parents, I can wish that you had died on the battlefield than to owe your life to such a man.”
Later as he lay sleepless on his bed he remembered old Scaevola’s wise words, counseling him that for such as Catilina death was not sufficient and was unavailing. There was only one just revenge on Catilina: the destruction of what he desired most.
And, I shall set myself to discover what it is, if it takes all the years of my life, Marcus vowed to himself, lifting his hand in a great oath.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The island lay like a crimson, gold, scarlet, green, and fiery ship on the sea of the warm blue autumn air; a glowing opal in hands of crystal. Peace enfolded it; only the sounds of distant cattle and sheep and goats, and the occasional bark of a dog, and the last wild cries of birds, and the splashing of radiant water, stirred the quietude. Serenely across the bridge, Arpinum basked under the sun as it climbed the flank of the opposite mountain, its cherry roofs sparkling like broken rubies. The delicate wind fanned scents of late roses and honey and warm crisp leaves and ripe grasses and grain into the silence.
There is much to speak in praise of the country, thought Noë ben Joel as he stood blinking approvingly in the sweet sunshine, and as he listened to the tender music of the basking earth. Nevertheless, it is in a way disquieting. Man realizes his irrelevancy in this world, his brash intrusion, his noisy discord, the absurdity of his meditations and his questions—and the irrelevancy diminishes him and accords him discomfort. The earth is august. It is joyously one with God. It is like a temple at dawn, before man profanes it with his presence. I prefer the city where I can delude myself that I am important and am indeed Jehovah’s crowning achievement, where what I say is accorded a measure of respect by my fellow parrots, and where the noise I make—no matter how ridiculous and inconsequential and blasphemous—is considered of worth simply because I am a man! Hallowed Lord, why did You afflict this, Your world, with so ugly a race, and why have You promised to save us and have vowed to give us a Son? It is possibly only a dream of arrogant man. Behold me, Lord, the least valuable of Your creatures, the least comely, the least harmless, the least significant, the least holy, and permit me to say with David: ‘What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man, that You visit him?’ We should spend our revolting lives with our faces in the dust, like the serpents we resemble. I can proffer Lucifer my sympathy, for we deserve his detestation. We are Your most inexplicable mystery, for we are but adulterers, liars, thieves.
In this subdued and uncomfortable state of mind Noë left the farmhouse and looked for company. Quintus, the true countryman, was with the shepherds in the meadows. Tullius was with his books in his cool dim library. Helvia was with her women; Noë could hear the murmur of female voices and the industrious humming of looms. Where was Marcus? No doubt in his mournful solitude near the river. Noë, attracted soothingly by the women’s voices, went in search of Helvia, who was fond of him and who smiled at his very appearance and thought of him as a son.
Noë found Helvia and her women taking advantage of the glorious and shining weather in the outdoor portico, where they had set up their spinning wheels and their looms and their tables of cloth. Noë paused for a moment to survey the women with delight, their placidity, their calm faces, their brisk hands, their bare brown feet, their red-lipped smiles, their dark brows and unbound hair. Their gossip was as innocent as bird-song, and occasionally a girl would laugh gently. Once, thought Noë, all Roman women were so, virtuous and simple and kind. It is a measure of the decay of Rome that the majority of her women are now only shrill-voiced imitations of men, busy with banking houses and stock brokers; or wantons, or idle fools concerned only with their appearances, their perfumed hair, their excesses, their scented bodies, their robes, their adventures, their jewelry, their scandal, their noisiness and raucous laughter, their endless follies which are like a stinking corruption.
Helvia saw him. She lifted a hand in greeting from the distaff. Her maternal smile invited him, and he approached her and sat on a stool near her. The mellowness of her coloring had returned in this sublime peace and beneficent air. Her eyes were polished with health and vitality. Her tresses, though heavily streaked with gray now, tumbled riotously on her warm shoulders. Her firm mouth was like a pomegranate, and her tawny hands flew. Noë could not look away from her. The slave women became shy and silent in his presence.
A basket of apples and grapes stood on a table near Helvia. Noë thoughtfully chose an apple and sank his teeth into its luscious texture, and sweetness and crispness, and munched contentedly. The looms and the wheels were a drowsy music. The wind was intoxicating. Long sunny shadows lay on the thick green grass. Hurrying bees paused to loiter over the fruit. The walls of the farmhouse were white mirrors of brightness. Noë thought, as he contemplated the women: these are the women of the dead Republic.
A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome Page 40
